Maya and the Rising Dark

Twelve-year-old Maya is the only one in her South Side Chicago neighborhood who witnesses weird occurrences like werehyenas stalking the streets at night and a scary man made of shadows plaguing her dreams. Her friends try to find an explanationperhaps a ghost uprising or a lunchroom experiment gone awry. But to Maya, it sounds like something from one of Papas stories or her favorite comics.

When Papa goes missing, Maya is thrust into a world both strange and familiar as she uncovers the truth. Her father is the guardian of the veil between our world and the Darkwhere an army led by the Lord of Shadows, the man from Mayas nightmares, awaits. Maya herself is a godling, half orisha and half human, and her neighborhood is a safe haven. But now that the veil is failing, the Lord of Shadows is determined to destroy the human world and its up to Maya to stop him. She just hopes she can do it in time to attend Comic-Con before summers over.